Mr. Mysterious: A Mister Standalone (The Mister Series Book 4) (17 page)

Now he laughs, but stifles it with a closed fist in front of his mouth.

“—hike up my skirt, and take me from behind.” I stop to smile with him. God, he’s cute. “Hoping, when he finally did that, he wouldn’t see the run in my stockings. The broken buckle on my shoe—”

“Downtrodden dame,” Pax says. “Nice touch.”

“—the cheap scent of my perfume.”

“Sugar, baby. Like you stepped out of a bakery every time I see you. There’s nothing cheap about smelling sweet.”

I have him now. That phone call is long forgotten. But… it’s fun. So I keep going with my little narration. “And he’d just lose himself in my lust.”

“Lust, huh?”

I take a deep breath. Happy. Happier than I’ve ever been, I think. “You’re fun, you know that?”

“
You’re
fun,” he says, coming close enough to grab my waist and twirl me around. “Is this how the story starts, then? You’re a dame looking for help from the down-and-out unorthodox detective?”

I go up on my tiptoes and kiss him, our mouths fitting together in that perfect puzzle-piece way they do. His hands slip from my hips to my ass, and he gives my cheeks a squeeze before hiking up my skirt, exposing my bare skin to the cool office air.

“I won’t be able to find that run in your stocking, sugar. Because you’re not wearing anything but this thong.”

“I’m not really a stocking kind of girl, but I can be if it turns you on.”

“Should I pick up a trench coat?”

I laugh, then lean into his neck and just sigh.

“What?” he asks, nuzzling my hair.

“I like you.”

“Well.” He kisses my earlobe. “That’s perfect. Because I like you too.”

“You don’t think I’m weird, even though I can be a little over the top?”

“You?” He pulls back in mock surprise. “No.”

“I know, right?” We smile at each other. Why did I start the story again? Oh, yeah. Phone call. What phone call?

“You’re definitely unique, Miss Sugar.”

“Miss Sugar,” I huff.

“And impulsive. And quite the little liar.”

“What?” Shit. What does he know?

“I own the sub shop,” he says, faking a high voice. “I was checking on you in there.” He nods his head to his office.

“Dammit. I was gonna tell you.”

“I don’t care.”

“I lied about the sub shop. I was bribing the delivery driver so I could meet you once I noticed you were ordering takeout.”

“So where do you live? Where do you keep the clothes you keep going home for?”

“With you. Now.” I smile, not sure how this will go since this is kind of the start of talking about it. “But I was living out of a backpack in a trailer at the campground up PCH.”

“Not a trust-fund baby?”

“Oh, I am.” I laugh. “But my father likes to parcel that shit out a little at a time. There’s all kinds of restrictions on it. I didn’t even get a monthly allowance for college. Every semester he took a trip out to my school to pay my tuition in person. I got a little bit when I turned eighteen. Just enough to buy a car and live in the dorms. Then I got a little bit more at graduation. But I used it for grad school. You see the pattern, I’m sure.”

“So you’re broke?”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” Pax says. “No, I’m just asking if you’re broke.”

“Not broke. I am an investigator. I have jobs I get off my brother’s website.”

Holy motherfucking shit.
What the hell is wrong with you, Cindy Shrike? Cinderella Vaughn has no brother.
I scramble to recover from my mistake.

“Well, I’m doing your jobs now,” I say. “So I’m not working on anything myself. But I get by. I’m not broke.”

“The trust fund is over?”

Whew. He didn’t notice. “Do you get a trust fund?” I ask, following his lead.

“Me? Ha.” He laughs. “No. My mother is a dig-yourself-out-of-your-own-hole kind of woman. But I don’t need a trust fund. I made smart decisions back in the day.”

He’s got this weird smirk on his face. Like he’s pulling something over on the whole world. “What? Did you steal it or something?”

“Steal it? Why would I steal it? That’s a weird question. You remind me of Match, you know that?”

Oh, fuck. I was totally safe about the call and now we’re right back where I started. “Who?” I ask innocently.

“Oliver Shrike? Mr. Match? One of the five who was accused? It’s funny, when he and I had our first money conversation, he asked me the same thing. Said his father pulled some kind of con when he was younger and ever since he found that out, he was…”

I lose track of his words. I was there when Oliver found out the kind of stuff my dad used to do with his friends before any of us kids were born. It was crazy. Ariel was the one who dug up the dirt. Just a casual,
Let’s see what kind of dirt we can find on Dad
, kind of thing. We never expected what we found.

“Cindy?”

“What?” Pax is looking at me expectantly. Like he’s waiting for an answer. “Sorry. I just kind of spaced out for a minute thinking about your Mister friend.”

“Hmmm.”

What kind of hmmm was that? Suspicious? “I thought you were gonna fuck me on the desk.”

“Is that right?” Pax says.

“We went from titillating fantasy to money. No one likes to talk about money, Pax. But sex,” I say with a wink. “Now there’s a fun subject.” I lean back into his neck, trying my best to recapture the moment. But… it’s gone.

Just then a knock on the door pulls us apart. I whirl around to see that man who came to visit Pax up in Malibu. Liam.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Pax says. “I told you, Liam. I’m not interested in your problem or your job.”

“Who’s this?” Liam’s attention turns to me as I hastily finish straightening out my skirt.

“No one you need to remember,” Pax says, turning to me. “Cindy, can you go grab me lunch from that sandwich shop down the street? Get my usual, please.”

Is he kidding? Trying to get me out of here without this weirdo noticing me too much? Or blowing me off? “Sure,” I say, not meeting his eyes as I pick up my purse and head towards the door.

“Let’s talk in here,” Paxton says. I chance one look back before I leave, but they disappear into his office.

Chapter Eighteen - Paxton

Liam is smiling like he’s got a secret. It pisses me off that he came into my life uninvited for the second time. But I keep the temper in check as I close the door behind him, then walk around my desk and take a seat.

The polite thing to do when talking to an equal is to sit in one of the two chairs facing the desk, with the guest in the chair next to yours. But I sit behind the desk for a reason.

I’m the one in charge here, and I want him to know it.

Plus, his back is to the door and I can see straight through the glass to Cindy’s desk. And I have the phone in front of me. “Let me just put this on ‘do not disturb’ in case Cindy comes back and wants to… disturb us.”

Liam brushes a piece of lint off his navy blue suit coat, like he couldn’t care less. “Pretty, that one. But a little slutty for a man of your breeding, don’t you think? Her ass was hanging out her skirt when I came in.”

“Why are you here?” I ask calmly, trying my best not to lean across this desk, grab Liam Henry by the tie, and choke this motherfucker to death.

“Mr. Corporate,” he says, taking out a notepad from his suit coat pocket. “Do you know his real name?”

“Um.” I laugh. “Weston Conrad. The guy I’ve known for ten years.”

“And how well do you really think you know him?” Liam is smiling like he’s got a secret.

“Look, if you’ve got something to say, then say it. Corporate and I aren’t besties. We’re not partners, or hell, even friends from my perspective. I don’t give a fuck who he is. But you obviously think I should, so let’s hear all your little secrets about him and hopefully that will explain away your bizarre stalking and I won’t have to kill you over it.”

Liam narrows his eyes, wondering if that’s a threat, a joke, or a promise.

Damn, I hadn’t realized how good it felt to be the bad guy since I’ve been hanging out with Cindy doing her cute little detective jobs. But I sort of miss these moments.

“Well, his name isn’t Weston Conrad, for one. And for two, he stole something from me a very long time ago. Something I want back.”

“I’ll ask this again. And I’ll try to be as concise as I can so you will stop wasting my time. What does this have to do with
me
?”

“I’d thought you’d like to know who set you up back in college. Forgive me,” he says, standing up and buttoning his coat, “for interrupting the nooner you were about to have with your secretary.”

“Sit
down
,” I command.

“Oh, so you’re interested all of a sudden?” But Liam unbuttons his suit coat and sits. Smiling like a cat with a canary.

“Corporate was accused too. It makes no sense that he was the one who set us up.” But I have always had a problem with Corporate. I mean, I have always had a problem with Romantic too. But Corporate, he never did add up. Romantic has a pretty paper-trailed past leading from point A to point B in a nice straight line.

Corporate’s past is like a dot-to-dot puzzle that I could never quite figure out. Match and Five and I worked on it relentlessly ten years ago when these charges came up. And even though Five has got to be one of the most talented hackers in modern day that I know of, we came up with very little before he went to boarding school as a teenager. Which means part of his past was hidden off the record for a reason.

“Well, he did set you up. He did. And I have all the proof and all the details and you will get every bit of it… once he’s gone.”

“Gone?” I ask. “You want me to
kill
him?” I laugh.

“I need him delivered to me alive so I can get this information out of him, but your run-of-the-mill accident will suffice once that business is taken care of.”

“I’m not a professional killer, Liam. You know this.” I have no problem killing people, but it’s not what I do. I like people to think it is—keeps them scared. Distant. But I don’t kill people for money, for fuck’s sake. That’s insane. My mother would never respect me if I was a paid assassin.

“You fix things. I need a fix.”

“I only fix things if I have all the details.”

He reaches into his pocket again, pulls out a neatly folded stack—kind of thick stack—of legal-sized papers. “And here’s our problem,” he says, grabbing the Mont Blanc pen off my desk and tapping it on the wood. “I have those details, and you can have them too, if you sign this non-disclosure agreement.”

I laugh. Kinda loud. “First of all,” I say, “I don’t sign anything without a lawyer looking it over first. And second of all, I’m never signing that, no matter what. So if you’d like to pay for my services, it’s going to be done with my own standard non-disclosure agreement or it won’t be done at all.”

“Fair enough,” Liam says, folding the wad of legal papers back up and placing them back in his coat pocket. “I’ll sign your agreement.”

He’s setting me up. I’m one hundred percent sure of it. But he does have my attention, so I get up, go to the file cabinet, and pull out the standard non-disclosure agreement I have with all my clients.

I slap the single piece of paper down on my desk in front of Liam and take my seat back behind it.

Liam signs.

I drag the paper over to my side, sign, then put the pen down and steeple my fingers under my chin. “Let’s hear it.”

“Weston Conrad isn’t his real name. The Conrads aren’t even his parents.”

“Hmm,” I say. “Go on.”

“He’s mixed up with a girl right now. Someone from his past. Do you remember her? Victoria Arias? They were dating when that charge came against the five of you.”

“Kind of. Dark, right? Pretty? Wild?”

“Yes.” Liam nods, smiling big. “I’d call her more than pretty, though. But yes. That’s her. They broke up—”

“All the time,” I say, recalling that little volatile relationship with ease, now that her name has been mentioned.